The socialists take a beating and the tyranny of "woke 1"

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1:27Don't worry.

1:31Hello and welcome to the State of It USA, the podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times that digs into the fascinating world of Trump's America. I'm Gerry Baker, editor at large of The Wall Street Journal and columnist for The Times. And I'm Katie Balls, Washington editor and columnist for The Times and Sunday Times. This week, we have another set of primary elections, but this time with a pretty different result. Those socialists took a bit of a beating for a change. Also, we'll be talking about the extraordinary story of President Trump and the food truck. But let's start off with another set of primary elections.

2:10This time, the most interesting one this time this week was in Wisconsin, where the governor's race for the Democratic Party was contested between a Democratic Socialist. This is the obviously the wing of the Democratic Party that is very much in the ascendant. That's been getting all the attention of late. Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong. Katie spoke to her a few weeks ago while she was campaigning, and she was up against David Crowley, who is a county executive in Milwaukee, the largest county in Wisconsin, a much more mainstream African-American, very mainstream Democrat, very much not a socialist, very much with the support of the establishment, the political establishment, and indeed beyond the political establishment.

2:50This was seen as a very important test, again, of whether or not the socialists would be able to continue to make these extraordinary gains that they've been making or whether, in this case, the establishment might be able to fight back. The polls beforehand suggested that Francesca Hong, the socialist, was going to win comfortably. She had anywhere between a 10 and 15 point lead in the latest polls. But a shocker, David Crowley pulled out a very, very narrow win by about half a percentage point. You'll recall last week, obviously, in Michigan, in neighbouring Michigan, And Abdul El-Sayed, who's not a democratic socialist, but is very much aligned with them, he won narrowly, also significantly underperforming what the polls said he would do.

3:32So this is a very important contest. It does look as though the establishment has struck back, the socialist candidate has lost, and it looks as though maybe Democratic voters in Wisconsin alarmed at the prospect of being saddled with a far-left candidate in the general election in November, decided that they opted for safety, couldn't risk going with the extreme candidate and went instead for the more mainstream democratic establishment candidate. So, Casey, what were your impressions? So I think there's a few things to take into account here. As you mentioned, I spent a day following Francesca Hong on the campaign trail.

4:08And one of the things she ended up slightly jokingly saying to the voters who gathered was, I am not a communist, never have been, never will. And I think it spoke to the problem she faced in her campaign is that she was depicted as very extreme, largely because of things she has said, some of which were a few years ago. But she was trying to run a campaign, which I think fitted with this spate of, you know, left wing insurgents winning primaries. You can date it back to Zohar Mandani last year. He's also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, as was Francesca Hong. and since then you know some DSA backed candidates some who are more aligned as you say in Michigan and don't have an official affiliation and coming up really with quite a populist in some cases socialist and others pitch that often involves free stuff and a focus on Medicare and also a focus on Israel but Francesca Hong was different I think because there has been a media circus in the past couple of weeks.

5:09I think every time I've looked on cable news, whether it's Fox News or something like CNN or MSN, she was getting a lot of discussion time. And she had said various things. She said abolish the Senate. She said that she didn't want to do that because it wasn't practical at this time. She said defund the police. She then said, well, as Wisconsin governor, she couldn't do that. And I think most notably and most impactful, she said in 2020, cancel Thanksgiving. And it got endless play. It wasn't just like things like abolish the Senate. And the more people think they're silly, I think, in the Democratic Party and why are you talking about it?

5:45But it's also quite DSA associated. The right like to focus on it. The Thanksgiving message just got endless play on all sides. CNN asked her about it and she gave a half answer. Eventually, she told Politico that actually Thanksgiving is one of her favorite holidays. But I do think it It just set her apart from these other left wing candidates as if she was not just to the left in a way that made someone comfortable, but was also quirky and a bit odd. And I think that has, from what we can see, I think, really hurt her. And I think quite a few establishment Democrats, centrist Democrats, corporate Democrats, whatever you want to call them, a breathing size of relief, because this is a purple state.

6:24it's not like some of these other areas where you've had insurgent candidates in New York or here in Washington DC when a DSA member's got the nomination for mayor. This is a really competitive, obviously, race. And it's one that if you look at the state, when Trump has won the presidency, he has won on Wisconsin. And when he has lost it, he has not. So I think there are some relieved Democrats. I'm not sure what you're hearing, Gerry. Yeah, one of the things that people have been talking about all week with this, you know, this apparent surge in the far left and the socialist and Democratic Party is the comparison with the Tea Party and the right in the Republican Party after Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

7:07You'll recall, Katie, that was the, you know, 2010 was when the Tea Party really got started. Very sort of, you know, right wing populist movement, which ultimately probably begat Donald Trump, it's fair to say. And you got in the course of that, both the 2010 midterms and again the 2012 general election, you got a lot of these very radical candidates getting selected for winnable seats for Republicans. I can remember there was one famous woman who sort of described herself and said she thought she might once have been a witch. There was a candidate who talked about legitimate rape. You had these very, frankly, I mean, unelectable freak show candidates and they lost seats that the Republicans should have won in those midterms in 2010 and again in 2012 and again, I think even in 2014.

7:57And I think that there's a little bit of more than a little bit of nervous among the Democrats that this is among the Democratic establishment, that this is what we're seeing this time around. that the Democrats, by electing in primaries some of these far-left candidates, Al-Said most notably in Michigan, and Hong would have been another one in Wisconsin, they're setting themselves up for defeat in what should be absolutely a banner year for Democrats and winning key states, whether at governor or senate level. And so it looks a little bit like, you know, again, people are stepping back from the abyss in the Democratic Party and what would be, you know, throwing away a golden opportunity.

8:34One other very quick thing I'd say about it is just there will be another inquest into how badly the polls got this wrong. As I said, last week, Abdul El Saeed was expected to have sort of an 8 to 10 point lead. He won by, what, less than a percentage point. Francesca Hong had a 10 to 15 point lead in the polls. She lost. One of the things that's going on is the turnout is much, much larger than people were expecting. And I think maybe it's one possible explanation for why the polls are so wrong is that they're not measuring correctly those who say they might vote. and they're discounting those.

9:05And in fact, they're coming out to vote in very large numbers. It's a problem right now in these congressional primaries, in these midterm elections. If this polling is still way off, if this isn't corrected in the presidential primary, which will be obviously now in less than two years' time, and we start getting really, really wacky results in some of those early primaries compared with the polls, that will have real significant political consequences. Jerry, if we're looking at where I suppose the progressive movement is going, a lot of it hinges, I think, at least the view over here in Washington on one woman, and that is AOC, the young-ish congresswoman from New York City.

9:47And she has lots of 2028 speculation surrounding her. Many will say she's more likely to go for a Senate seat than a 2028 run. This week, it's safe to say she's got a lot of people talking and everyone's attention. She revealed that she had frozen her ex, and this is at the age of 36. It then followed that she'd also separated from her fiancé. You also had her then giving an interview on US TV where she talked about a range of things, one of which was this progressive movement. And she gave this answer about how perhaps Woke One was a bit much. Woke One was crazy. There was a huge opening of the Overton window.

10:26We were shut down. There was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. Jerry, is that trying to kind of reset the narrative ahead of a potential tilt when she's talking about how things have changed on Wokery? Yeah. So look, the first thing to say, I think, is that, you know, those of us who have been pretty hostile, shall we say, to woke and regarded as one of the most terrible sort of political and cultural phenomena of the last 20 years should, first of all, welcome some acknowledgement by one of the advocates of wokery that actually they went too far and became not only absurd, but actually rather menacing and oppressive.

11:18You know, if she's saying that was wrong, then good. I mean, part of me sort of wants to say, you know, well, it's sort of not quite good enough just to sort of dismiss that as woke one. So, you know, we just went we overreached a little bit. I mean, it's a little bit like, you know, Mao after the Cultural Revolution saying, oh, you know, Cultural Revolution one wasn't quite right, but we've got Cultural Revolution two coming up. Don't worry, much, much, much better. But again, Katie, it is an interesting example, I think, of the uncertainty the Democrats face. They have got this far left movement, the democratic socialists, who do support many of those woke things, you know, whether it's defunding the police, opening the prisons, opening the borders, all that kind of stuff, all of which was sort of associated with the kind of woke, the sort of the woke tyranny.

12:04People at AOC, who is very ambitious and I will say, you know, in to her credit, if you like, is astonishingly good at getting attention and being a public figure sort of way beyond her, frankly, her competence or experience. She's an extraordinarily high profile figure. And she recognizes that, you know, that stuff is a problem. As you say, she didn't endorse Francesca Hong and she's now talking about Woke One. And she's then, you know, again, some evidence that they're backing away from it. But at the same time, they are democratic socialists. She is. They are all part of this movement. Just one final thing I'll say on it.

12:41It is possible that the sort of socialism, if you can call it that, is moving more towards economic issues and away from the cultural issues. That, by the way, might not be a bad thing. I'm not a defender of socialism, either economically or culturally. But I think that seems to me to be the evidence. If you look at what Mamdani is doing here in New York or you look at what things like AOC is saying or some of these other left wing people are saying, they are deemphasizing the cultural stuff, the trans stuff and reemphasizing things that people of my generation grew up associating the left with, which was, you know, redistribution, high taxation, high government spending, looking out for the disadvantaged, the economically disadvantaged rather than focusing on these sort of identity issues.

13:24And I wonder whether that isn't, A, quite productive for the Democrats, because there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the economy and the country at the moment, and B, smart politics. And so it might actually be that, you know, once again, AOC has this sort of uncanny ability to sort of to put her finger in the right place. I think she's clearly incredibly politically savvy in terms of her communications and how she picks her issues and even freezing eggs. That is a topic that everyone suddenly pays attention to because lots of women in their 30s, even some in their 20s, you know, they think about it.

14:02And also she's managed to come up with something about herself, which has then made MAGA and the Republican movement all have a fight with each other, which is lots of conservative men have had these slagging off AOC, which they like to do. and then these migrant women saying hang on a minute actually maybe don't make fun of a woman doing this because we have lots of conservative voters who have put their career first and now on to try these treatments and so I think even even talking about her own personal journey feels to me political and then I think I think you're right when it comes to what is the comfortable space for for the democrats and in terms of the progressive movement I mean I guess when it comes to her woke one she hasn't really gone into the detail of what she regrets about her you know initial work period and if you go back to things she said I mean and she didn't go quite as hard but she definitely you know she defended the concept of defunding police and talked about you know what that might look like if you defunded police um you know the area would look like a suburb but I think perhaps more people will think about her position on trans so she has defended transgender athletes.

15:11She said trans girls are girls and criticizing bills. Riley Gaines, who is the former swimmer who now campaigns about women's sports, I think when she was being anti-trans playing in women's sports, ASU said to her that she should channel her anger instead into swimming faster. Look, I mean, yes, I think the lesson is healthcare for all. Yes. abolishing Thanksgiving no and you know that might conceivably be a winning message it certainly seems to have been in Wisconsin anyway we'll take a short break then when we come back we will talk about the extraordinary image or potential image of President Trump inside a food truck being offloaded on an airplane stay with us

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17:36And we're back. Now, this week, there's only really one story that has been dominating the conversations of the White House press corps, which is effectively what happened on the plane back from NATO in Turkey. The Washington Post first, and this is something I talked about on the radio this week, uncovered details and other U.S. papers have since joined in of the fact that Trump had initially flown, and this was known, he had flown to the NATO summit on his new Air Force One, which was a gift from the Qatari government. They had then decided that he would fly back on the old Air Force One due to security reasons, and there was talk of an Iranian plot to get him.

18:16But what we didn't know until this week was he didn't actually get on the old Air Force One, or maybe he got on it very briefly. He did not fly from Turkey on it. He snuck through a catering trolley, which he hid in onto a smaller Air Force One, and then changed back at Mildenhall in England when they did their stop before getting off the plane in D.C. and acting like things were normal. Now, White House press corps, some White House aides didn't know he wasn't on the plane. And, Gerry, I think it speaks to a few things. But I suppose first off, let's talk about the act itself and then where we are really with Iran.

18:55It's just such an arresting story, this idea of the President of the United States boarding a plane and then immediately going off in a catering truck out the other side in a rather undignified way. I think some of that is a little bit overdone. You know, presidents do have to basically do, well, they don't have to, but they do follow the advice of the Secret Service. This clearly was a serious threat, supposedly. It does, of course, raise, you know, the question of whether or not everybody else on that, as you say, that old Air Force One that was rolled in, whether everybody else was basically a decoy, because if that plane was apparently not secure enough, to withstand the threat of what I understand was a sort of surface-to-air missile threat coming out of Turkey, then it means that everybody on that plane were acting as, were the decoy plane and presumably expendable, which included obviously large numbers of the White House press corps, significant numbers of White House staff, including senior staff, including, by the way, I think I'm right in saying, Katie, Marco Rubio.

19:55Yeah, Marco Rubio was on what we might call the decoy plane. Exactly. So, you know, take it. it's the Secret Service's job famously to be prepared to take a bullet for the president but it now seems to be the Secretary of State's job to be prepared to take a surface-to-air missile for the president so look again I think it can be a little bit overdone it's not surprising that when the White House press corps were used as a decoy that it gets a lot of attention but in terms of the actual operation I think amusing as all the spectacle is and as sort of arresting as the idea that these people were used as decoys is this is not a completely unreasonable thing to do I mean, on Iran, it just I mean, I think the large question, as you say, Casey, we don't need to dwell too much on, you know, the Iran.

20:35We've talked a lot about it, but it just shows again, you know, it does. I think the larger image here is of a president who is, you know, frankly, being, you know, being sort of humiliated by Iran. I mean, here he is, you know, not only is he failing to achieve his objectives in the war and there's no evidence that he's doing that. And Iran still seems to have the upper hand over things like the Strait of Hormuz. but they're you know they're forcing him to take rather you know embarrassing and hide in catering trolleys embarrassing embarrassing evasive measures yeah i think it adds to the sense that he is not in control and is not over in the way he wants to be i mean there's always been threats you know on donald trump's like from the iranians we've heard and you know the iranians will also put out these you know they put one out recently saying you know we want to assassinate Melania Trump and I think some in the White House will be a bit like the press shouldn't be giving all this stuff attention you know we get they will say we get these death threats all the time it's nothing new from the Iranians but of course when you're in the middle of a war and that isn't going away despite the president's best efforts to find that off ramp I think people obviously all these things have more significance and probably are taken more seriously as a result of it and and then I think just the other factor is you know this this week you had Trump and one of his very brief phone interviews saying that he is low-keying it on Iran.

21:57And you also have the energy secretary claiming that oil is up to, you know, pre-Straight of Hormuz going wrong heights, so that is being questioned. But I think just going into the summer, the fact that, you know, reports of Trump frustrated at the number of missiles or the lack thereof, it just feels a bit as though he's trying to find a way to put the war on the back burner without actually having much to show for it. Yeah, it looks like they've shifted to a sort of an economic warfare strategy in the last week or two. The constant threats of annihilating Iran and its infrastructure and everything else and raining down fire and fury seem to have been replaced by what might ultimately may have a better chance of success, which is maintaining the blockade, keeping Iran from exporting its oil and other products, putting the economic pressure on that way in the hope that Iran will be brought to the negotiating table and agree to do the things the US wants.

23:00I remain a little skeptical about that. This is not a regime that seems to care too much about the plight of its people as long as it's able to continue to get supply presumably from Russia and China with whatever it needs to keep itself, its defense capabilities strong to keep itself in power. And I think, you know, the idea that it's going to sort of surrender just because, you know, it's costly, it's standard of the people's standard of living has dropped sharply, I think is a bit of a long shot. And just finally, Gerry, data centres. Something I wrote about in the Sunny Times just gone is how revolts are brewing when it comes to data centres.

23:42And to me, it seems one which the White House is either not caught up with or doesn't really care, think is a big enough problem. What we've seen across America, of course, is the rise of data centers. There are different figures as to how many, but a rough estimate would be 4 ,000. When it comes to the AI revolution, there'll be a lot more to come. But you look at some of the candidates who have won recently in primaries. So Abdel El-Sayed in Michigan, for example, made data centers a really big part of it. You've got Republicans on the ground who are also Vivek Ravaswami in Ohio, the Republican candidate, who are also coming up with their own policies on data centers.

24:21And then you have the White House that has ultimately promised to try and cut red tape environmental concerns to allow as many as possible. And Trump last week dismissing some of the criticism. Even the Texas governor has now paused some of the work on data centers. And Trump's saying they're effectively beautiful buildings and they're going to be the next oil. So everyone should have effectively stopped going on about them and get behind them. Jerry, do you think this is a problem to come? I do. I mean, as you actually point out and you pointed out this week, Katie, that this is a bipartisan issue.

24:53As you mentioned, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, has promised to limit significantly the building of these massive hyperscale data centers in Texas. The governor of New York here, Kathy Hochul, imposed the first statewide moratorium on the building of these large data centers. This is something like 75 percent of Americans say they don't like these things. It's partly nimbyism, of course. People don't want these things anywhere near them in their neighbourhood. But they do also represent a significant drain on energy resources. Now, many of these companies are building their own power plants too.

25:32But they are seen as a threat to the economic sustainability of many states here. I think two things. One, I think this is part of a larger revolt. Revolt's the wrong word, but a larger unease about AI. And everybody knows that AI is developing at an extraordinary pace. And most people probably think it's going to put them out of a job and completely up in their lives. And they're probably right about that, at least in the short term. and these data centers are a very tangible way of sort of pushing back against that. I also think, Katie, that there's a much larger thing going on. Americans are very unhappy with the state of the economy.

26:18They're very unhappy with the state of the country. Two-thirds of them say the country's on the wrong track. Very large numbers. This links back to our conversation about socialism. Very large numbers of them say capitalism isn't working. And I think part of what it is is that they're partly right about this, that American capitalism has become dominated by these huge corporations. Every major sector in the U.S. economy is dominated by a handful of companies. You have these oligopolies. People feel increasingly kind of powerless and increasingly frustrated at this massive – and by the way, these companies have cozy relationships with the government.

26:54They spend huge amounts of money backing candidates. They have very, very expensive lobbying operations. rules are made largely on their behalf, at least that's how it seems. And then they come along and want to build these massive, massive plants, data centers all across the country. And I think people are just tired of being, you know, a fee of this sort of feeling of helplessness and this feeling of smallness in the face of this enormous, you know, this political business nexus between these incredibly powerful, incredibly wealthy people who run these companies and the government that basically does their bidding.

27:31And I think it's quite an important sort of political development. Yeah. And Trump at the center of it in the way that he has, you know, well, the tech bros at first went to kiss the ring, but he has accepted that gladly. And therefore, there does seem to be in this second term, the sense of what is good for Silicon Valley is good for America and good for Trump, which again is just adding to that sense. And with that, that's all we have time for this week. So do join us again next week where we have two special summer episodes coming out, slightly shifting gear, unless of course something happens and we have to get back to you sooner.

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